


like cymbals crashing, like molars gnashing

by winteryknights (BlackcatNamedlucky)



Series: the motor city old guard [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Gen, Gym AU, Not Beta Read, because this was not serious enough to beg any of my friends' time, ggcu, no one actually gets hurt they're just sparring, non graphic/gory descriptions of fights, she's in college it counts, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackcatNamedlucky/pseuds/winteryknights
Summary: She discovers the dreaded walk from her apartment to campus yields blessings, too, when she spots the flyer for a fight gym that’s hiring trainers stapled to a telephone pole towards the end of September. She pauses to take a picture of it before carrying back on to class and resolves to call them when she goes for lunch, making a mental note to ask Sebastien if he knows the place before she does. He might not outwardly appear the type, but Nile has been around enough fighters to recognize it in the way he holds himself; whether it’s bare-knuckle in a back alley or gloved up in a ring, he’s no stranger to a brawl.And besides, he’d told her he had a little training when she’d mentioned that she was coming into college late (he’d scoffed at that) because she’d been a Marine.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman
Series: the motor city old guard [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955878
Comments: 14
Kudos: 89





	like cymbals crashing, like molars gnashing

Nile is on her own for the first time in a long time and she’s—

Well, she’s adjusting.

And Detroit isn’t too horribly different from the city streets she’s used to. A little emptier, maybe, and, well, the roads are more pothole than concrete at this point, but there’s a familiarity in the buskers and graffiti and nighttime bustle and it almost makes up for the fact that… the public transit is a joke.

Almost.

She’s still not over the fact that she’s going to have to walk from her apartment to class every day. It’s a good job she grew up in Chicago and knows how to layer appropriately.

She’s not quite comfortable in the bigger lecture halls yet, always feels like there are too many variables out of her control for her to truly settle down and pay attention to the lesson, but she knows it could be worse. She’s privileged to have been able to leave the hell she’d signed 10 years of her life away to. She has the opportunity to let old wounds heal.

There’ll be scars, but fresh blood will not pour from them.

She can deal with scars.

~*~

A month into her first semester she makes her first real friend in this place. He’s a man about 10 years her senior in her metalworking class who invites her out to lunch at a felafel place near campus and, almost without her realizing, gets her to talk about the problems she hasn’t wanted to burden her mom with on their calls.

It’s a little hard to separate the gratitude from the guilt when they’re done talking. They’ve knitted themselves together with a yarn spun of worry that she’d unduly encumbered him with her problems and striated with an anxiety that there was some kind of con at play. She really hopes not.

They part ways when they get back to campus, him to go to work and her to another lecture, but not without exchanging phone numbers and a promise to meet up again. He leaves with a smile that’s almost sad, there’s definitely something in the eyes, and Nile abruptly wonders if her smiles are like that, now. If, maybe, he saw the storm that swelled and crashed around inside her, if he’d recognized it from his own tumult and decided to extend an offer of help without having to use so many words.

And so, the gratitude said to the guilt, tink, tink, tink.

~*~

She discovers the dreaded walk from her apartment to campus yields blessings, too, when she spots the flyer for a fight gym that’s hiring trainers stapled to a telephone pole towards the end of September. She pauses to take a picture of it before carrying back on to class and resolves to call them when she goes for lunch, making a mental note to ask Sebastien if he knows the place before she does. He might not outwardly appear the type, but Nile has been around enough fighters to recognize it in the way he holds himself; whether it’s bare-knuckle in a back alley or gloved up in a ring, he’s no stranger to a brawl.

And besides, he’d told her he had a little training when she’d mentioned that she was coming into college late (he’d scoffed at that) because she’d been a Marine.

Sebastien, as it turns out, is the trainer the gym is hiring to replace. Nile feels a rush of embarrassment when he tells her so, quickly followed by guilt when she sees that he’s distressed for having upset her. It only eases when he assures her he still teaches there, it’s just that an old injury keeps him from drilling groundwork and he’s forced to stick to beginner classes.

Their lunch outing turns into an impromptu job interview when he realizes that she’s available to cover his grappling classes and the gym won’t have to cancel them. At the end of it he tells her that he’ll talk to his coworkers and, if all goes well, bring her in to meet them that night.

~*~

All goes well.

Sebastien picks her up from her last lecture at 6:30 and drives her along a familiar route to the gym that she realizes is only a 5-minute walk from her apartment building. There’s a boulder outside with “The Motor City Old Guard” engraved in block letters on it, and a recurve bow made to look like a stylized D painted below the name.

Otherwise, it’s an incredibly nondescript building. There are a few signs on the whitewashed brick that claim parking spots outside as reserved for gym-goers and an old leather medicine ball props the door open, but there are no flyers or advertisements on the outside and the shades have been drawn over the windows. It doesn’t look much like a gym.

Maybe there is some sort of con at play.

The worry is dispelled as quickly as it pops into her mind when Sebastien guides her inside and the first thing she sees is two men circling each other in a boxing ring in the middle of the room. Nile notes that they’re clad only in fight shorts and hand wraps and wonders if this is an impromptu sparring session or if these people are just a little bit insane.

The taller of the two, a white man with shaggy brown hair that suggests he’s put off going to the barber a few weeks too many, makes the first move. He springs forward, feinting to his left and narrowly ducking the right hook that his opponent swings in retaliation. He drops low, grabs the other man around the waist, thrusts his shoulder into his abdomen, and sends them both to the mat. His opponent, a brown man whose curls are already escaping the bun they’re tied back in, hits the floor with a grunt. Barely a second after he goes down, his legs have already locked around the other man’s back, but the guard is down before the other man can even try to break it. He’s flat on his back just as quick, hips now straddled by the shorter man. There’s a pause, then, both seeming to be in some kind of haze as they stare at each other, chests heaving with effort.

It’s now that Nile notices the women who have been watching this. Or, well, more accurately it’s now that her brain registers them as something that needs her attention, as the taller of the two inexplicably snaps, “not on my mat!” and her companion snorts out a laugh.

When she looks back at the men, the taller of them has his legs clinched around the other’s neck, relaxing only when a hand comes up to tap his thigh. 

The other man pops up with surprising ease considering he’d been in a chokehold only a few seconds prior, and offers a hand to help his opponent up. He turns, then, and sees Nile, face brightening.

“ _Ahlan_! You must be Booker’s friend! Nile, right? You’re here for the job?”

She smiles, tentatively, and looks at Sebastien ( _Booker?_ ) out of the corner of her eye. “Uh, yeah, that’s me. Are you-”

He shakes his head before she can finish the question and gestures vaguely at the women standing at the side of the ring. “Andy’s the one who’ll be conducting the rest of your interview.” He pauses and inhales sharply, squinting at Nile. “Good luck,” he finishes, nodding at her before turning and ducking out of the ring. His training partner, now standing still enough that Nile has time to notice the mirrored scars on his chest, gives her a brief nod and tight smile before following him.

“Not in my showers, either!” Maybe-Andy calls after them, pushing herself off the rope she’s leaning on and circling the ring so she’s standing in front of Nile. She feels something nudge her arm and looks over to see Sebastien holding track pants and hand wraps out to her, shaking the bundle at her when she doesn’t take them immediately. She does so, cutting her eyes back to the woman who stands in front of her and watching her carefully. “Put those on,” she instructs, “bathrooms are down where Joe and Nicky went, then, you’re gonna show me how much of what you told Book here was true.”

Ah. So this _is_ Andy. And this is why Maybe-Joe-or-Maybe-Nicky had wished her good luck.

She probably should’ve just gotten a job at the university library.

But her mom didn’t raise her to back down from a fight, so she skirts the ring and turns down the hall where the two men had gone. The door at the end of the hall is marked “Employees Only” in screaming red letters, so she turns to the two on either side of the hall. Where there once were signs that likely demarcated gender, there were now only 4 bolts in the center of both doors, so she listens, and pushes through the door she doesn’t hear a shower behind.

She slips into one of the stalls and makes sure she hears the soft snick of the door close before taking off her boots and jeans and pulling on the pants Sebastien had given her. The fabric is stiffer than she’d expected, they must be straight from the shop she had seen tucked into one corner of the gym, but she can move freely so she’ll deal with the slight discomfort. She exits the stall, putting her folded jeans and boots into one of the cubbies on the opposite wall, then heads out to the main room again. She shucks her jacket, which Sebastien takes from her, and steps into the ring where Andy is waiting.

Right into a punch.

She ducks in the nick of time, taking the opportunity to push in closer to Andy and grab her by the shoulder, driving her knee into the other woman’s gut. There’s a hand clawing at her arm and a quick strike to the hollow of her neck and suddenly she’s halfway across the mat, staring down an indifferent Andy.

So that was how this was gonna be.

She advances again, pivoting to send a kick to Andy’s hip. Her gratification at seeing the other woman go down is stopped in its tracks when she feels a hand clamp around her calf and she crashes to her knee, one leg still held fast to Andy’s side. She twists, plants her hands on the mat behind her, and tries to push herself out of Andy’s grasp, leveraging her free foot against the other woman’s hip bone and coming away with surprising ease. Andy stands, then, exhilaration burning in her eyes, and backs away slightly.

Then there’s a kick headed straight for Nile’s face and she forces herself forward, arms looping around Andy’s thigh as she drives her shoulder into her gut and folds at the waist, slamming the other woman down. Almost immediately a leg wraps over her shoulders and the world tilts and she feels her back hitting the time-worn mat. Andy stands over her, delight evident on her face, and reaches a hand out to help her up.

By the time Nile stands, Andy’s face has dropped into something sharper, more analytical, and she looks Nile up and down. “So, Booker says you were a Marine.”

Nile nods, finding herself itching to stand at ease.

“Well,” she purses her lips, then takes a breath. “We forgive past transgressions,” she says, looking pointedly at Booker, though a twitch in her jaw betrays a smile. After a moment she looks back at Nile, light dancing in her eyes. “Welcome to the crew. I’ll go get the paperwork.”

Nile is left feeling a little too dazed to truly process that she just got her ass handed to her and then offered a job by the person who did it in the span of five minutes, until a hand claps down on her shoulder and she whirls around to see Sebastien. There’s a proud look on his face, though his smile is still small, still a little sad. “Congratulations, Nile,” he says, and the warmth in his voice reminds Nile very suddenly of her father.

It must show on her face because Sebastien looks concerned, now, brow furrowing. “Are you ok? Did you get hurt?”

Nile shakes her head, swallowing around the tightness creeping up her throat. “I’m fine,” she manages to choke out. “Thank you, um, for helping me with this, I really appreciate it,” she says, trying to steady her voice. She takes a deep breath, looking out behind Sebastien for a moment before focusing back on his face. “I should, uh, get changed.”

“Oh, yeah, totally, ok. Well, hey, since you don’t have classes tomorrow and I only work in the morning, how about I take you out to celebrate, huh? It might help to know a thing or two about the kind of people who come to train with us.”

Nile smiles at that and the pain twisted in her stomach starts to ease into something more comfortable. “You’re paying,” she says and sees Sebastien’s lip tick up.

“Taking my job and my money? You’re going to fit right in,” he laughs. “You go take care of the paperwork, I’ll wait outside to drive you home,” he says, giving her one last smile before turning and leaving the gym.

She notices, then, that the two men who had been sparring when she’d entered the gym have emerged from the showers. They’re standing just at the entrance to the hallway, the shorter of the two leaning against the wall, and the taller leaning against the shorter. They’re watching her closely, but Maybe-Joe-or-Possibly-Nicky smiles at her when he notices her looking, pushing off the wall and stepping forward to extend a hand. The handshake is brief but firm. “Hey, welcome,” he says, in a voice that rasps warmly. “That was a good fight, Andy married the last person who got that close to beating her.”

“Quynh did beat her, _tesoro_ ,” the other man says, though it’s somewhat hard to make out between his quiet tone and thick accent.

“You say potato,” the man says over his shoulder, turning his attention to Nile again. “I’m Joe, he’s Nicky. You’re taking the Tuesday and Thursday night classes?” He waits for Nile to nod before continuing. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, then,” he says, smiling and clapping a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve gotta head out, but don’t be a stranger, yeah? If you’ve got any questions we’re more than happy to help out.”

She nods, smiling at Joe then behind him at Nicky, “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

~*~

She runs into the woman who had been by Andy’s side as she’s leaving the bathroom and Nile is entering and gets a soft smile. “We’ve heard a lot about you, Nile,” she says, her accent light and lilting. “And I’ll let you in on a secret, Andy had no doubts about hiring you the minute Booker mentioned you were looking for a job. You’re a good friend to him, he needed that.”

“So, wait, she-”

“She fought you because it is the vetting process. You fight like a caged animal, you throw everything you have into it, but you control the violence. You never did anything you didn’t have to. We have had some...unsavory trainers come in. Students, too, but that’s harder to account for. She had to make sure you understand the gravity of fighting and the responsibility of teaching it. You do. So, welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, uh-”

“Quynh,” she supplies, smiling. 

“Thank you, Quynh.”

“Of course.” With that, she ducked down the hall, leaving Nile alone to think.

She does understand, maybe all too well, the consequences of violence for violence’s sake. She’s still kept awake by the faces, still haunted by the bodies in her dreams. Every day is a step forward. Sometimes accompanied by a few back, sometimes a step through an ocean in the midst of a hurricane, but slowly, slowly, she’s getting to dry land.

**Author's Note:**

> ahlan- welcome (if I am not mistaken in my basic understanding of Modern Standard Arabic with a Levantine twist)  
> tesoro- treasure/sweetheart
> 
> as I have told every friend who subjugated themself to listening to me ramble about this fic, it is essentially just all of my interests piled in a clown car and careening down Woodward, which is to say it was a non-serious writing exercise that I'm publishing because why not. nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed it! comments/kudos make my day :)  
> you can find me on tumblr at [the-sneering-menagerie](https://the-sneering-menagerie.tumblr.com) if you'd like to chat!


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